Cloud computing

The sky’s the limit? Think again.

At times it’s been labeled a fleeting trend, a fashionable buzzword- at others the future of digital information infrastructure. But what is the cloud anyway?

The term originates in a 1996 paper from MIT where researchers used the term “cloud” to describe how the decentralized Internet could be coordinated into a unified system. Wikipedia describes the cloud as the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).” It’s an exciting, dramatic sounding concept, one that has such a ring to it that Dell and other major computing firms have even made repeated unsuccessful attempts to trademark the term. But in many ways the idea is nothing new:  companies like Google and Amazon are already providing cloud services to millions of users around the globe. 

In fact such services are rapidly becoming big business. The think-tank IDC predicts cloud computing will be a 44 billion dollar market by 2013 with some analysts putting the figure at 160 billion by 2015. In late 2009 the city of Los Angeles reported that it plans to save millions by switching from Novell’s GroupWise desktop software to cloud-based Google Apps. Ever forward-looking, Apple has joined the rising cloud tide with the construction of a massive new data center dedicated to future cloud computing offerings.  And IBM is reportedly working on a computing system called Project Kittyhawk that would be capable of hosting the entire Internet as an application.

The irony of this last fact, according to many cloud critics, is that the rise of the personal computer was itself a rebellion against the tyranny of centralized computing operations – and of the IBM mainframe world in particular. As Oracle founder Bill Ellison puts it: “Cloud computing is not only the future of computing, but the present and the entire past of computing.” This presents its own problems. In addition to growing concerns about regulatory problems, legislative issues and security vulnerabilities, there is a fear about relinquishing control of technical capabilities to a source somewhere “out there” in the cloud. This is a scary prospect, especially for businesses where data sensitivity is essential.  In the era of WikiLeaks and political wrangling around privacy issues such as  Google’s recent problems in China,  the need for better control and security is rapidly becoming a major factor in how businesses think about and administer their IT networks.

Here at SamSari, we temper these concerns with the growing enthusiasm among some of our closest customers over the cloud’s enormous potential for positive impact. Whether their aim is opening new and stronger communication channels within their organization, or pushing a vision of a more connected, interdependent world, our customers are increasingly turning to cloud services to add value to their business. As a Change Agency working with communication, we think it’s important to be there every step of the way as our customers adopt new technology and new ways of working. Whether the future is in the cloud or bolted tight to terra firma, it’s bound to be exciting. We’ll see you there!